The Glass Room, by Simon Mawer
A near-perfect novel of architecture, art and love
The latest from novelist Mawer begins with great promise, as Jewish newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer meet with architect Rainier von Abt, not just an architect but "a poet...of light and space and form," who builds their dream home, a "modern house...adapted to the future rather than the past, to the openness of modern living." World events, however, are about to overtake 1930s Czechoslovakia. Viktor, like most in the community, dismisses rumors of impending pogroms-"The only people who hold the German economy together are the Jews"-but once the signs of Nazi occupation become impossible to ignore, the Landauers must abandon their beloved home. As the world spins into chaos, the highly symbolic Landauer house is the only constant; though it shifts identities more than once, the house remains "ageless," a place "that defines the very existence of time."
The author tells us in a Note at the beginning of this novel that the beautiful modern house that contains the Glass Room is not fictional. Here called the Landauer House in Mesto, it is in fact the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, completed in 1930; and, excellent and faithful though the descriptions of it are, some readers may like to look at Google Images to see what the exterior and the interior actually looked like. They can also ascertain that the real name of the architect, here called Rainer von Abt, was Mies van der Rohe, and the real owners of the house were Fritz Tugendhat (a textile magnate) and his wife Greta, who were BOTH Jewish.
Shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2009
The Bells, by Richard Harvell
Born in a belfry in the Uri Valley of the Swiss Alps, where his deaf-mute mother rang the Loudest Bells on Earth, Moses Froben possesses both a remarkably sensitive ear and an exquisite singing voice, enabling him to overcome his humble origins to become Lo Suizzero, the musical toast of Europe in the eighteenth century. In papers left for the son he raised but did not sire, Froben recounts being rescued from his father’s murderous plan by monks Nicolai and Remus and taken to their abbey, where the choirmaster recognizes the boy’s gift and goes to inhumane lengths to preserve it. In the neighboring town, Moses meets Amalia Duft, daughter of the area’s wealthiest man, whose love becomes a beacon for his life even after his castration. Despite an opening note that reveals part of the story, Harvell builds suspense as Moses struggles against the superior forces of the noble family Amalia is forced by duplicity to marry into, reaching a bittersweet conclusion. Taking few liberties with history, Harvell has fashioned an engrossing first novel ringing with sounds; a musical and literary treat.
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Richard Harvell was born in New Hampshire, and now lives in Basel, Switzerland. He studied English at Dartmouth College. The Bells, his first novel, is an Indie Next Pick (October, 2010) and is being translated into a dozen languages. |
Widow’s War, by Sally Gunning
Mystery author Gunning moves to literary historical with this provocative tale of a whaling widow determined to forge a new life in colonial Cape Cod. When Lyddie Berry's husband drowns in 1761, her grief is compounded by the discovery that he's willed her the traditional widow's share—one-third use, but not ownership, of his estate. Lyddie's care, and the bulk of the estate, have been entrusted to their closest male relative, son-in-law Nathan Clarke, husband to their daughter Mehitable and a man used to ordering a household around. Lyddie's struggle to maintain a place in her radically changed home soon brings her into open conflict with an increasingly short-tempered Nathan and his children from two previous marriages. Gunning infuses the story with suspense and intrigue, as Lyddie's plight brings her into the orbit of local Indian Sam Cowett; community censure then brings her an ally in sympathetic lawyer Ebeneezer Freeman. Gunning resists easy generalizations and stereotypes while the story pulls in 18th-century law and Anglo-Indian relations, but the dull period dialogue, of which there is a great deal, reads awkwardly. Yet she makes Lyddie's struggle to remake her life credible and the world she inhabits complex. The crisp prose is flavored with the stinging salty atmosphere of a New England community witnessing a strong willed widow’s war for independence. A good choice for book groups.
How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn
How Green Was My Valley is Richard Llewellyn's bestselling -- and timeless -- classic and the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn's characters fight, love, laugh and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people.
Written in 1939, Richard’s first book has become a bittersweet coming of age tale of a boy growing up in a large family in a small town, and of his love for his lovely sister-in-law. This is a coal mine story, so you just know there's going to be some tragedy involved, and of course there is. The story is written from the depths of the author's heart and soul. No wonder it won an Oscar when it was made into a movie.
Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
Lauded for his sensitive memoir (My Own Country) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brothers long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Vergheses weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel.
From John Irving: That Abraham Verghese is a doctor and a writer is already established; the miracle of this novel is how organically the two are entwined. I’ve not read a novel wherein medicine, the practice of it, is made as germane to the storytelling process, to the overall narrative, as the author manages to make it happen here. The medical detail is stunning, but it never overwhelms the humane and narrative aspects of this moving and ambitious novel. This is a first-person narration where the first-person voice appears to disappear, but never entirely; only in the beginning are we aware that the voice addressing us is speaking from the womb! And what terrific characters--even the most minor players are given a full history.
